Canberra region winemakers aim high in Young Gun of Wine Award

The Young Gun of Wine Awards recognises up-and-coming winemakers from across Australia, and two Canberra region winemakers are on the shortlist for 2024.

Since 2007, the list has celebrated excellence in winemaking while also making space for innovation in the industry.

The award is unusual, as award founder Rory Kent explains: “Uniquely and since day one, the wines for the Young Gun of Wine Awards are not tasted blind. These awards are as much about vision and leadership as they are about the quality of wine in the glass.”

Canberra region locals Nathan Brown of Linear Wines and Chrissie Smith of Intrepidus Wines have both made the shortlist – a guide to the cutting edge of winemaking in Australia.

Nathan might be familiar to Canberrans from his days owning Pulp Kitchen in Ainslie before he left the hospitality industry to pursue a career in winemaking.

“Winemaking is actually a pretty similar process to working in a kitchen. You’ve got a natural product that you’re trying to look after and guide through the fermentation process, so it’s almost like a recipe,” Nathan explained to Region, “although the timing is obviously very different: red wines and those bigger styles of white take at least 12 months. But you’re really just trying to get something great onto the plate – or the glass – for your customers.”

Linear Wines was born in 2018, just one year after Nathan worked his first vintage at Collector Wines.

Rather than owning a vineyard, Nathan partners with growers in the Hilltops, Tumbarumba, Gundagai and Canberra regions to stake a claim on promising pockets of grapes in their vineyards. He tends to them throughout the year and harvests the grapes by hand before returning to his custom-built winemaking facility in Murrumbateman.

“I think the most important thing for me is building a good rapport with the growers. They’ve put in so much hard work for this fruit so they want to see it going to someone who will do the right thing by them.”

Thanks to that relationship, Nathan is now working with growers to graft different varieties onto the vines to find climate-appropriate grapes that may have been overlooked in the past.

Chrissie Smith’s winemaking journey was a big change from her job in the disability sector, but once she got a taste for winemaking, she was hooked!

“I was in the middle of a divorce, needed a new job and had three young kids, but I just jumped in and decided I’d make wine!” Chrissie told Region.

She enrolled in a wine science course and worked for several different wineries in the Canberra Region, such as Jeir Creek, Clonakilla and Collector Wines. In 2021 she had the opportunity to take on a one-acre vineyard in Yass and Intrepidus Wines was born.

The Intrepidus vineyard produces shiraz and sangiovese grapes, and Chrissie sources other varieties from the Hilltops region. She describes her wines as being “a little off the beaten track”, as she experiments with co-fermenting white grape varieties like viognier, roussanne and marsanne with shiraz grapes to make her VRM Shiraz.

Chrissie also completed her Advanced Wine Assessment Course with fellow Young Gun shortlistees Anita Goode from Wangolina and Hannah Maltby from Mac Forbes Wines in Victoria. She judges wines at the Canberra show and is on the board of the Canberra Viticulture Society.

This is the second year running that Chrissie has been shortlisted for the Young Gun of Wine Award.

“Being such a small and new brand, it really helps to have that recognition, and it makes all the hard work worthwhile.”

Find out more about the Young Gun of Wine Awards and vote on the People’s Choice Award. Visit the Linear Wines and Intrepidus Wines websites to find stockists and more information.

Original Article published by Lucy Ridge on Riotact.